The hikers looked at one another in dismay. They thought it was a signal for violence of some kind. In a panic they rushed out of the Great Hall and along the corridoor toward the front-door, carrying with them Toker as the Bogle in spate will carry upon its waters the broken branch of a pine. Luckily the table in the entrance hall on which the bonnets of the MacDonalds were always parked gave Toker something to which he could cling and thus escape being swept down the front-door steps and out into the courtyard of the Castle. In fact he was back in the dining-room in time to push in the great chair of his master, who took his seat at the head of the table when the pipes retired to avoid interrupting grace with the odd noises pipes make when a tune expires.

“Dash it, where is Mr Fletcher?” the Chieftain asked when from his seat the chaplain did not rise to ask a blessing upon the food.

“Mr Fletcher is probably arranging matters in the old dining-hall,” Mrs MacDonald boomed from her end of the table. “Won’t you say grace yourself, Donald?”

“Oh, very well. For what we are going to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful,” he barked.

The pipers now came in again and began to march slowly round the dining-room to the strains of Will Ye No’ Come Back Again?, the first of the Jacobite airs Angus MacQuat had chosen for the delectation of Mrs Chester Royde.

“Fine old song, eh?” Ben Nevis said to his honoured guest who was sitting on his right.

“Oh, but of course, it’s one of my very very favourite songs,” Carrie declared fervently.

“Yes, I thought you’d like it. I expect he’ll give us Over the Sea to Skye next.”

Carrie’s thoughts were in Glenbristle. Her host’s treatment of the hikers had made her a little anxious for those two campers with whom she had spent so delightful an afternoon.

“Tell me, Ben Nevis,” she asked, taking advantage of the pipers being at the end of the room for a moment or two, “what do you think of Scottish Nationalists?”

The tints of the dying dolphin at their most vivid and most varied would have seemed drab compared with the tints that displayed themselves upon the countenance of the Chieftain when he heard this question. The hats of cardinals, the shirts of Garibaldi’s legionaries, the flags of the World Revolution, the ribbons of O.B.E.s, the plumes of flamingoes, the tails of redstarts, the breasts of robins, the skies that warn or delight shepherds according to the time, the tunics of grenadiers and the tape of the Civil Service mingled and melted, flamed and faltered, and flamed again in his cheeks.